


Message

by BurningTea



Series: Season 11 fic [13]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Could be read as friendship but I always see them as in love, Episode: s11e12 Don't You Forget About Me, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 22:16:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5945140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claire's clearly bothered that Castiel hasn't been in touch, and it gets Dean thinking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Message

Dean notices it almost as soon as they get to Jody’s house. Claire leans a little to the side, just for a second, her gaze looking like it’s trying to latch on to something behind him. When she tilts back upright, her lips slightly parted on a word she doesn’t say, he sees disappointment in her eyes. 

She shutters it away. If Dean wasn’t so practiced at reading minimal clues on a similar face, he’d miss it.

Later, when he’s talking to Claire after they eat, after a family meal that pulls up visions of what life could have been like, there are pauses and gaps in her conversation. Dean thinks he knows what might be meant to fill them, but the same thing is leaving fissures in Dean’s heart and he isn’t sure he wants to shine a light on them. 

It’s Sam who brings it up.

“You heard from Cas at all?” he asks, and there isn’t anything in his voice to suggest it’s a loaded question.

Dean sees Claire’s shoulders hunch in. She tilts her head away, a messy plait swinging forwards and hiding part of her face, and Dean thinks how much harder Castiel would have been to read if he’d been able to hide like that. The realization that this young woman in front of him could have been Castiel, was for a short while, is something he likes to forget. He isn’t even sure if Cas could still leap from Jimmy to Jimmy’s daughter, and he’s pretty sure the angel wouldn’t do it. Not now. 

Cas cares for Claire. That much has been obvious for a while. It’s a wonder, really, that he hasn’t turned up to help. 

“I, um,” Claire says, and shrugs, folding her arms and slumping back onto the settee. “I called him a couple of times. Texted. Got nothing back. Guess he’s got angel stuff to take care of.”

And yeah, for years Cas left Claire to fend for herself, but Dean knows it wasn’t cruelty. It was ignorance. Cas really didn’t consider that the girl he’d taken over for a few vital minutes, whose dad he’d worn as armour for years, might need anything. Once he’d caught a clue it had been added to Cas’ list of missions, and the dude didn’t give up on his missions. 

“Nothing at all?” Dean asks. “Not even one of those stupid picture things he likes?”

A fraction of a smile pulls up the side of Claire’s mouth and she dips her head. 

“He sends you those, too? You ever get a long-ass message explaining how they’re like hieroglyphics and how they aren’t? I think he was bored or something.”

“Er, no,” Dean says, glancing at Sam, who shrugs and pulls a face. “Can’t say I have.”

“All I did was ask him about a symbol I found in a book,” Claire says. She sounds stiff, but like she wants to open up. Must be tough, building some sort of relationship with the being that took your father. “And I get something the length of the Bee Movie script about axes on wood and shit. And then a message asking if I wear a scarf when it’s cold.”

Dean and Sam share another look, and this time Sam looks amused. Fond. Dean wonders what kind of interactions Sam and Cas had when Dean was off with the Mark, because they’ve become closer, more relaxed around each other. When not involved in a cage-fight with Luci, anyway.

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Cas gets random crap stuck in his head.”

Claire looks across at him, and it’s even more obvious that she wants to smile and scowl at the same time and is holding herself back from doing either.

“He really does,” she says. “He gets these little glimpses of what might matter to us, and then he makes them more important than they are. I suppose it’s better, though. When he used me as a coat, there was just no sense of getting anything human. That Castiel probably wouldn’t have worked out scarves were for cold weather.”

This time, Dean knows it’s his own smile that must look odd.

“I guess he has more idea of what it’s like to be cold, now,” he says.

Claire does frown, then, like she isn’t sure what he’s talking about, and Dean wonders if anyone’s ever told her Cas was human for a while. Human and homeless. He thinks Cas would only mentions it if he thought it would help Claire. Hell, Cas never talks about that time that Dean knows of. Cas hardly ever talks about what he’s been through.

“But he hasn’t got back to you this time?” Sam asks, leaning forward.

Claire shrugs again and the hurt is easier to read than Dean thinks she wants it to be.

“No. Still, no big deal, right? It’s not like he’s really family. And you two have turned up. So, what’s the plan?”

And all talk of Cas is shut down. Dean knows better than to bring him up again unless Claire does, and she doesn’t mention him even once, not all the rest of the time they’re there.

It’s when they’re back at the bunker that Dean’s phone buzzes and he finds a message from Claire. It’s got a picture attached, a photo of that fucking cat Cas bought for her, looking grumpy as ever. It looks like it wants to murder the world and end itself with it. Claire’s message is underneath. ‘Tell Castiel being ignored makes me feel like this. And he owes me another present to make up for it.’

Deans shoots back a reply telling her to get herself a happier looking cat, and sits at the library table with his phone in his hand, thinking. Or trying not to think. 

He scrolls back through his messages, noting how many he’s sent to Cas since their little day-trip to Hell, how many more he’s sent since Cas turned up in the Bunker and trashed the place doing research. No reply. He taps out another message, slowly, not sure there’s any point.

At the same time, he prays. The same words are in each.

‘Cas. Let me know how you’re getting on. Claire’s worried about you. Don’t do this to the kid.”

He presses as much insistence as he can into the prayer, even though Cas has never said it makes a difference. Willpower has got Dean through tough times before, and he’s willing to believe it makes a prayer stronger, too. 

“I’m not loving the radio silence, Cas,” he says once the message is gone. “And it’s bad enough when you do it me, Buddy. But Claire? Come on. I know she’s not your kid, but you were all about protecting her, not so long ago. What gives? You get bored?”

When he gets no answer, he looks back at other messages, at the ones where Cas mentioned Claire, asking if he should send her something or stop by to see her, wanting to know what Dean thought would make her happier. No way Cas would just drop Claire like this. Dean, maybe. God, wherever he’s scuttled off to, knows Dean’s a screw-up, and he’s screwed up few things as thoroughly as he’s been known to screw things up with Cas. About time the dude worked out that Dean wasn’t worth it. But Claire?

Sam stares groggily at Dean when, hours later, he gives in and pads into his brother’s room. 

“What’s going on?” Sam asks, blinking into the light spilling round Dean’s shoulders.

“Get up,” Dean says. “Cas isn’t just being his usual level of off. Something’s got to be wrong, and we’re going to find out what. For Claire.”


End file.
